Barkhausen Field Trip

Our trip to Barkhausen started a bit chilly, but the day ended up beautiful. Lots of fun and lots of learning took place. What a fantastic day!

Click on the link below to see pics of our trip! Enjoy!

Barkhausen 2013

Swimming

If there was any doubt about the fun we had swimming- let these pictures help you decide. What fun we all had!

Comparing and contrasting

We spent a bit of time today looking at our plants. They have really grown over the past 3 weeks! We've been doing a lot of observing using 4 of our 5 senses (we don't ever taste things during our organisms unit- YUCK!) After observing and documenting our information about our own plants, we got together in small groups where each seed was represented and we compared and contrasted. The pea plant was especially interesting with its stringy look and the heart shaped leaves of the kidney bean were also very interesting. Did you know that the pumpkin plant even had a very unique smell?

Cats versus DOGS

An interesting day to say the least. This morning, Mrs. McAllister, one of our 2nd grade teachers came down to let us know that her students had written letters to us and asked if they could come down later in the day. They had been working on how to write persuasive paragraphs and had done cats versus dogs. Now if you don't know... Mrs. McAllister is a huge cat lover, as much so as I am a huge dog lover and when we both taught together in 2nd grade we had some friendly bantering back and forth over which was better... needless to say, the friendly bantering has continued despite the fact the we teach different grades. 

So, this afternoon her kiddos came down and read their persuasive paragraphs to us in hopes that we would like cats better than dogs. In the end we graphed our results and what we found out was that 10 kids in our class liked dogs better versus 8 who liked cats better. Whew! It was a neck and neck race right til the end, but in the end DOGS RULE (and cats still drool)

Ask your child to share the letter that their 2nd grade friend wrote to them. It should be in their DOG binders this evening.

Also, we have been reading a chapter book together called, Gooney Bird Greene. Have your child tell you about the chapter we read today, "The prince, the palace and the diamond earrings"  The title is misleading... have them explain to you what was funny about the chapter and what their initial (and probably yours as well) mental image was.

Have a great night!

Terrariums

We have begun our study of organisms in science. This is typically one of the favorites of the year. Today we made woodland terrariums which will house both plant and animal organisms. For right now, we have planted pine seedlings and moss. We took time today to observe the plants using all of our senses, except taste, and then described what we observed. Next week we will be creating aquariums to be able to observe aquatic organisms as well.

Big Kahuna Quarters!!

In math today we started talking about quarters. there was a lot of interest in all of the different state designs. If your child is interested in exploring more on their own, please click on the link below to view all of  the state designs and even the designs that were considered but not chosen.

State quarter designs

Family Fun Night!

Just a reminder that our Annual Family Fun Night is coming up quickly. As always, there will be lots to do and fun for all. There will again be food, games, various raffles and auctions, including the all-famous teacher auction.

This year I will be auctioning off a PJ, Pancake and Porkie Day. If your child wins, they and 3 of their friends will be able to wear their PJ's to school and join me for lunch in my classroom where I will make them a pancake lunch... but not just any pancakes.... check out some of the options below.  We may even make magic pancakes... sorry- it's a secret for the winner's eyes only. Hope to see you on April 19th!!!

Louie strikes again

Louie the leprechaun stopped by our room once again and this time left us a box of his favorite cereal, Lucky Charms. He asked us to sort, count, and graph the various types of marshmallows in the box. After graphing our own portion, we combined our results to find out what the most common and least common shape within our class was. We found out that moons were the most popular with over 200 in the box and shooting stars were least with only 18. What a difference! 

After we discussed our class results, we added our info to a nationwide count. It was interesting to see that the results were similar if not the same as ours!

You can check out the results on 

http://www.projectsbyjen.com/Projects/LC13/LC13_results.html

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

€ Sara €